A woman who is the municipal prosecutor for the Joint Municipal Court of Delaware Valley — which serves Frenchtown and Alexandria and Holland townships — and who is prosecutor for Kingwood Municipal court, which shares its court with Milford, steps aside pending an investigation.

A township clerk didn’t know anything about it. Court administrators and elected officials referred questions to the county prosecutor. He first said it was a municipal matter, but then a few days later conceded she had stepped aside pending an investigation.

This sort of systemic obfuscation of basic personnel information has no place in the public sector, where taxpayers foot the bill. It is especially improper when the jobs intersect with matters of public safety; the public has a right to know that it can be confident in those who are dispatched in times of crisis or emergency.

And the only private things that should be permitted in the courts are those that a judge has specifically approved. The rest is, literally, the public’s business.

To be fair, details about on-the-job performance and allegations against an employee can be embarrassing and in the private sector, such information is usually confidential.

But those who decide to work in the public sector automatically waive certain rights to privacy.

Their salaries are public, their employment contracts are public, their pensions and sick days are public and they must often subject themselves to the public’s scrutiny.

For others to “protect” them, by delaying the release of information or clouding the details of their employment, reflects disloyalty to whom they are responsible, whether it’s intentional or not.